Two Poems by Anne Haven McDonnell

The Underworld is Alive

She said, and I mean alive. We drill through 400 million orbits of earth to sea lilies and squid that bloom like black ghosts, and we kill to get there. Of course life sleeps deep in earth’s heavy body. Of course the seams of life are seamless. Of course we have forgotten, our hunger. Our water bodies tilt, our tides wash through, our salty blood seeks sea. We have not forgotten, our hunger. We are the adults now, she says to my sleeping hands, the fish who quicken in my body’s rivers, the roads outside press against the giant warm turning of earth. One in four mammalswill be gone, and their furred bodies, nipples, their warm breath gather in the corners. A tawny flank, an ear, a wet black eye. I think of the seals who watched us, bald round heads bobbing in the waves, the dark pools of their eyes following our every move. We were wrong about the underworld, we knew it would be this way, the waters gone from the leaves, the tongues, the rains, the tears. Not wasted, but taken.

“Emerging View”

written on the for sale signs scatteredand spreading up county road 8. Fallin the conifers, a rusty glow sinksthen tags the mind, a thingforgotten, the tug ofunraveling. The forest givesitself up, a luminoussmear of exit—aspens quilt a dizzyyellow, and now thisblanket of dead lodgepole pine.We can almost hear the strangerhythm that brings those beetles,thrums with weak music,the fungus that follows their footsteps,their marbled blue trailspolished like a mapon her kitchen floor. Still,an old woman can rest here,orchids in the boggy meadow,chanterelles on the fire road,a pine marten on the bird feederwatches her watch him throughthe window. Hungry moose furrow deeptrenches through snow bankson the creek, which roarsinto spring’s swarm. We lookthrough dead pine,the snowy teeth of James peaknow visible, mountainsrise like the grieving that rollsinto this strange season,wheeling towards us, namelesson our animal tongues.

It is difficult to write well about the kind of loss associated with climate change, yet that is exactly what this poet has done. Instead of allowing didacticism to throttle lyricism, these poems speak with an authenticity and authority that comes from deft mingling of fact and the imaginative act. Grim irony and paradox riddle a sonic richness and the reality of the daily beauties of a world where “Still / an old woman can rest.” These poems are compelling and true to the wrenching complexity of our greatest challenge. Wilfred Owen was thinking of another kind of war when he wrote, “All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful.” These poems call his words to mind, for nowadays mountains rise like the grieving that rollsinto this strange season,wheeling towards us, namelesson our animal tongues.

Anne Haven McDonnell lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and teaches English and sustainability courses as an assistant professor at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her poems have been published in Terrain.org and Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment.